“It should be easy to write a purpose statement for a renewables company,” notes Ana Jordan, Head of Human Resources at Elawan Energy, the Spanish company at the heart of ORIX’s global renewable energy platform. “But it still takes time and effort to do so thoughtfully, particularly when it comes to balancing the societal benefits with our commercial needs.”
Over the past year, Elawan has done just that: crafted a set of Mission, Vision & Values (MVV) that is fit for purpose, specifically for the Purpose & Culture launched by ORIX Group, its parent company, in November 2023. And this experience gives an insight into how each ORIX subsidiary around the world, as well as in Japan, is adapting the group’s umbrella statement to match the needs of their specific industry and business goals.
“At Elawan, Mission stands for the shorter-term aims; Vision refers to the company’s long-term objectives; and the Values are what get you there,” says Ms. Jordan, says Ana Jordan, who co-led the project with Laura Nieto, Communication Manager, under the stewardship of the company’s leaders.
Committed to the process
ORIX Group had been clear since it launched its Purpose & Culture that it wanted to allow its group companies the flexibility to develop their own Mission, Vision and Values within the framework of the Group’s overarching Purpose & Culture. Since ORIX Group is a corporate group active around the world in a wide range of sectors including financing and investment, life insurance, banking, asset management, real estate, concession, environment and energy, automobile-related services, industrial/ICT equipment, and ships and aircraft, group company-level MVVs would allow specific businesses to operate more effectively within the intricacies and characteristics of the industries they operate it.
To kick off this process, it held workshops with the leadership of each of its major regions outside of Japan, and one for the Group’s Europe-based companies, ORIX UK, ORIX Europe, ORIX Aviation and Elawan was held in Rotterdam in March, 2024. Dionisio Fernández Auray, the founder and CEO of Elawan, attended this workshop and this led to his decision to make the defining of Elawan’s Mission, Vision and Value a priority that would help guide the growing company and its employees into the future.
“At the ORIX Group Purpose workshop in Rotterdam, I felt that Elawan was being included in the ORIX Group global family and that we could learn a lot from our global parent in how to position ourselves for growth in the future,” explains Mr. Fernández Auray. “As we had been growing very fast in the past few years, I felt this was a great opportunity to take a step back and look again at who we are and who we want to be in the future for ourselves, our customers and for our communities.”
This led to the decision to make the development of Elawan’s Mission, Vision and Values a ‘grassroots’ process, involving as many colleagues as possible, starting with all the company’s senior management at a workshop held in Madrid in June, 2024. Daniel Lochmann, Managing Director, Group Communication and one of the leaders of the ORIX Group Purpose & Culture’s global development and activation, attended the workshop and gave the attendees a deeper insight into the background of the Purpose, its development and how it fits into the company’s 60-year history. Elawan management then brainstormed some initial ideas around what their Mission, Vision and Values could look like.
The findings from this senior management session were then used as a starting point for an all-company project to decide on the final Mission, Vision and Values. In the end, almost 80% of Elawan’s roughly 220 staff participated, a first for the company. The only way to achieve this given the geographic spread of the business, which has operations in 15 countries across Europe, the US and Latin America, was to schedule six workshops in different time zones and different languages.
Designed by a third-party facilitator, each workshop included seven sections, including an introduction, a summary of ORIX Group’s overall Purpose & Culture and segments to generate ideas for Elawan’s specific MVV statements. The workshops were designed to be interactive and agile and included exercises to collect actionable input from the participants.
Where possible, the project team gathered people in one room, though two of the six workshops ended up being virtual for practical reasons. Still, at four hours each during a normal working day, this represented a considerable commitment from everyone who participated, observes Ms. Nieto.
Refining the values
The findings were summarized in a master document and presented to the leadership team to synthesize into final MVV statements during a concluding ‘executive’ workshop. Both the Mission and Vision were relatively easily to nail down, given Elawan’s well-understood goal to become a global leader in renewables and play its part in the energy transition through a commitment to sustainability, innovation, technology and diversity.
There was more of a debate about Values, where a long list had to be narrowed down to half a dozen key concepts. Alongside trustworthiness, teamwork and accountability, what really stood out was efficiency, says Ms. Jordan. “Efficiency came out of every workshop as a key value; everyone understood this, and we realized it is really the DNA of our company.”
Although Elawan was founded in 2008 and today is an established independent power operator with more than 90 projects in operation and 18 under construction around the world and 2.02 Gigawatt of renewables facilities in operation, the fact is that “we still think of ourselves as a start up,” according to Ms. Jordan.
The new MVV statements have been rolled out externally and will be featured prominently on Elawan’s website and corporate communications materials.
Building a corporate spirit
On that basis alone, the Purpose exercise must be judged a success. And it has also had the positive, if unexpected, side effect of knitting the company closer together, report Ms. Jordan and her colleagues. The high participation rate, the clear initial communications from Mr. Fernández Auray about the importance of the project and the time spent collaborating during the workshops all served to reinforce Elawan’s ‘esprit de corps’.
Even the challenging logistics of scheduling the different sessions and forcing people to focus on what can often feel like abstract concepts helped to create a sense of common understanding, notes Ms. Jordan. This is reflected in positive feedback, with the workshops being rated eight to 10 out of 10 by those taking part.
“Defining our Mission, Vision, and Values has been a key moment for Elawan. It gives us a unified voice that strengthens our communications both internally and externally, ensuring that who we are and what we stand for is clearly understood by our people, our partners, and our communities,” says Laura Nieto.
In fact, so good has the reaction been, that the Elawan team is considering another company-wide brainstorming exercise on a different topic.
